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nly place where we can be where there are lights at night and where we can get to see the fellows and write a letter. We stay there for an hour or two and tramp back through this ---- (censored) mud to our billets." And of all the lights o' war one must know that the lights of the Y. M. C. A. huts cast their beams not only into the hearts of these lads but across the world, and sometimes I think across the eternities, for in these huts innumerable lads are seeing the light that never was on land or sea, and are finding the light that lights the way to Home. And these are the lights o' war. XIII SILHOUETTES OF SUNSHINE There is laughter and song and sunshine among our boys in France. Let every mother and father be sure of that. Your boys are always lonely for home and for you, but they are not depressed, and they are there to stay until the job is done. There are times of unutterable loneliness, but usually they are a buoyant, happy, human crowd of American boys. Those of us who have lived with them, slept with them, eaten with them, come back with no sense of gloom or depression. I say to you that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite of war, they are living normal lives, with just about the same proportion of sunshine and sorrow as they find at home, with the sunshine dominant. Some Silhouettes of Sunshine gleam against the background of war like scintillating diamonds and "Send a thrill of laughter through the framework of your heart; And warm your inner being 'til the tear drops want to start." There was that watch-trading incident on the Toul line. The Americans had only been there a week, but it hadn't taken them long to get acquainted with the French soldiers. About all the two watch-trading Americans knew of French was "Oui! Oui!" and they used this every minute. The American soldiers had a four-dollar Ingersoll watch, and this illuminated time-piece had caught the eye of the French soldier. He, in turn, had an expensive, jewelled
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